1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to manufacturing conforming components and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for conforming first and second components by using a robot/machine to reverse engineer the first component and then using the same robot/machine to modify the second component to conform to the first component.
2. Background
The joining of major structural components of an aircraft, for example, a wing-to-body join, is a significant part of the total time required for final assembly of the aircraft. A total cycle time for the final assembly of an aircraft may, for example and without limitation, be three days, and a reduction in the time required for joining major structural components is desirable.
Major structural components of an aircraft are usually joined by positioning the components adjacent one another and then drilling holes through the components using a multistage drilling process. Multistage drilling ensures higher hole quality and minimal burrs in the components.
About 15 minutes may be required to drill each hole in a multistage drilling process, and hundreds of holes may be required to be drilled in order to join a wing to an aircraft body. Thus, the overall aircraft assembly process may be quite slow. Also, there is a significant potential of out of tolerance holes being created in a multistage drilling process, which may result in further delays.
A number of solutions have been proposed to expedite drilling operations for reducing the joining cycle time of aircraft components. Proposed solutions include drilling undersized holes in the two components to be joined, and then reaming the holes to full size when the components are joined. This proposed solution avoids a multistage drilling process and may reduce assembly time. The proposed solution, however, still requires a major drilling effort and the potential of out of tolerance holes remains.
In another proposed solution, the components to be joined are drilled to nominal dimensions, i.e., the dimensions are drawn without any reverse engineering. Tolerance requirements, however, are much tighter in this proposed solution. In particular, the tolerance requirements for each component is maximized because each component is drilled without updated information on the drilled hole location of the other component. When all aspects that could influence the final fit of the components are considered, the tolerance requirements may become prohibitive.
Another proposed solution is to reverse engineer a first component and then machine a second component to conform to the first component. The reverse engineering is performed via metrology, and may introduce a second set of uncertainties which are in addition to machine uncertainties.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that overcomes the above issues in conforming components.